


Charming Ghost of Lestrange

by Chae_Seungwoo



Series: Dashes of Culture [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Depiction of Death, F/M, Ghosts, Hogwarts, M/M, Mentions of other Hogwarts Students, Original Cast takes a Backseat, Original Character(s), Post-War, Side Story, eighth year
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 07:09:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12835932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chae_Seungwoo/pseuds/Chae_Seungwoo
Summary: The beautiful die young. The extremely beautiful with one-sided love die extremely peculiar, young deaths.





	Charming Ghost of Lestrange

**Author's Note:**

> This focuses on the original characters rather than the Golden Trio. There is an implied Draco/Harry but it's pretty brief and rather faint.
> 
> This originally was around 1.5K and now it's almost three after fixing all this stuff.
> 
> This is also my **first work so I hope it's good. Now back to that neglected pile of AP homework.**

He can remember that it was his first year at Hogwarts, right when he met the ghosts of Hogwarts that he met the charming ghost.

 

“I am Leonis, but call me Leo for short.” The ghost had winked at the students, causing a giggle to erupt from both wizards and witches. Harry had smiled from the ghost’s words.

 

In comparison to the other Hogwarts ghosts, Leo was not the ghost of any particular house. He was tall, almost as tall as the Bloody Baron and Nearly Headless Nick, towering over the Gray Lady and the Fat Friar. The color of his features was rather visible in comparison to the other ghosts’ appearance, perhaps symbolizing his rather recent death. Moaning Myrtle often raved about him when Harry, Hermione, and Ron had used her bathroom for rather unconventional purposes. Confined to her bathroom, she often whined about her inability to lay her eyes on the handsome ghost as being male, he rarely passed through the female bathrooms.

 

The ghost had his black hair parted slightly on the side, his fringe hanging over his eyes. Occasionally, he would brush his hand through the hair to straighten it out, causing any student in sight to promptly faint when he glanced at their direction and smiled. What happened to be rather peculiar were his clothes. He must have been at some dance when he had died, his clothes being rather kept and neat in comparison to the daily robes of the other students like Harry himself and Ron namely. Harry was almost reminded of Malfoy; the boy had always had neatly greased back hair and his tie was straight and perfect as if Malfoy had charmed it to stay like that. The ghost wore a fashionable navy waistcoat with a white dress shirt. He adorned a blue tie, a shade lighter than the navy of his waistcoat and a brooch was pinned to his breast. He wore black trousers to match and a black suit jacket with an elaborate white embroidery of a peacock from his left shoulder, over the back and ending at the right end on the backside. The ghost did not wear the jacket often, seeing as he could not feel heat or cold and often went around with the jacket rested on his arm or unbuttoned on the occasions that he had adorned the jacket.

 

He appeared quite androgynous and if it weren’t for his rather deep voice, Harry might have been convinced that it was a girl wearing the suit rather than a boy. It did not help that the ghost often had an oleander flower tucked behind his ear. In the rare situations that the flower was absent, a book on magical creatures was present in his hands. His blue eyes were astounding and his smile could melt the ice of the lake in the dead of winter.

 

Even being near the ghost made one react to his person. He was handsome and if that hadn’t made a student of any year act like a first-year with a crush, he was kind. Often, he could be seen helping students with their homework, practically giving them answers.

 

He was scolded by Hermione on several occasions for that.

 

“Leo, you can’t just tell them the answers! There’s a reason why we were assigned this homework and it wasn’t for you to tell them and have them not think about it.” Hermione glared at the ghost.

 

Ron snorted. “You’re just jealous that you haven’t learned half the things that he knows and that he doesn’t help you.”

 

“Sorry, it’s just, I wanted to help and I know how it feels when you can’t ask anyone because you’re supposed to know and yet the information seems to have been stolen away by someone like Peeves.” Leo smiled.

 

“Still.” Hermione protested.

 

Harry wasn’t present when that particular conversation had taken place. Ron told him about it the after Quidditch practice. Harry rarely saw the ghost but others in his year often spoke with him.

 

“He reminded me about my homework right when I was about to leave with it still on the table in the library.” Neville had said. This kind of motion was expected as Neville was naturally aloof and clumsy.

 

He had also overheard Lavender Brown saying, “Why he’s absolutely charming. I had just lost my bunny the month before and he comforted me for two hours by the lake. That was embarrassing but he didn’t mention it after that which makes me kind of glad.”

 

Hermione was persuaded sometime in sixth year. Harry had just learned about Horcruxes and was telling Hermione and Ron about them when Hermione suddenly bolted out of her seat and ran off to the library. She came back with a book fairly quick and pointed out sections of the books which was dusty.

 

Harry was wordless for a moment and then he spoke. “A book like this wouldn’t just be sitting in the library like that. If it was, wouldn’t Voldemort have seen it instead of confronting Slughorn about them?”

 

Hermione grinned. “See, here’s the important part. I looked through the restricted section with a forged letter that I gave to Madam Pince and suddenly Leo came by and told me to follow him. He told me to enter the Room of Requirement and that he had hidden the book after lacing it with Anti-Summoning charms and all the protective spells he knew before he died because someone in their year was trying to find out more about them.”

 

Not long after that incident, Hermione also joined the group of admirers for the ghost.

 

 “He asked one of the house elves to bring me some food into the common room the other day because I was too busy researching about what we learned in Transfiguration that day. We even debated about the ability to turn into an Animagus without prior training. Honestly, we even talked about equal rights for magical creatures. Harry, you and Ron need to read a book. He’s the best debate partner I’ve ever met!”

 

Of course, the ghost was generally liked by all the houses although the Slytherin boys often degraded him for his equal treatment of all the students. It was generally accepted that the ghost was handsome with even Lockhart fans admitting the ghost was better looking, even if only by a slight difference.

 

When Parvati Patil had curiously asked the ghost how he had died in the middle of the eighth-year common room, the ghost had only sighed before learning back in the chair he was technically sitting in.

 

 _‘It was back in my seventh year’,_ the ghost recalled. _‘Back then, I had already decided that I wanted to work for the Ministry. Maybe a Curse Breaker or in the MLE department_. _When I was alive, it was easy to just say that you wanted a job at the Ministry but you had to have almost perfect scores, all Outstandings to even be considered when you applied for a position, unless you had connections.’_

_‘I worked harder than anyone in my year. I was ambitious, a Slytherin after all, like the rest of my family had been but for better reasons. Every night, I would stay up in the library, a stack of books about each subject I was taking on the table. I had almost the whole library at my section. Even now, if you gave me the title of a book from the collection of books they had, I could have recited the whole book from pure memory. Mind you, our librarian then was lenient about after-curfew hours at the library. Don’t know how I would be able to stand being in the library if Pince was the librarian.’_ The students chuckled. _‘The Triwizard Tournament still went on when I was alive and the Yule Ball was held at the end of the year after the Tournament winner was decided. You see, my best mate, Arcturus and I, we were close, almost never seen without the other. I thought he wouldn’t be able to get a date since all the girls had thought we were taken but who knew? All along he had been dating a girl without even telling me.’_

Leonis shakes his head. _‘Celina Winter was the most beautiful women I had ever set my eyes on. I’ve kept up with her family after they came to Hogwarts and I think I’ve heard that one of her great-great-great-great grandchildren became a signer? Named after her, Celestina Warbeck?’_ A gasp had rose among the students. _That_ Warbeck? _‘I ended up going without a date to the Yule Ball. Pitiful isn’t that? My best mate arguably ended up worse off than I did. There was this girl that liked him, kind of creepy she was about showing it. She had asked him if he would go to the Yule Ball with her and she had offered him her baby teeth when she had asked him. He awkwardly gave them back and rejected her.’_

_‘She cursed him, some spell no one knows how to counteract even to this day. It was a secret passed down from her family to curse someone and only could be used one in a lifetime and she died soon after leaving Hogwarts, ending the bloodline there. The spell had turned him into a bloodthirsty vampire for a moment an hour before midnight. If everything had gone according to her plan, he would have been dancing with Winter among the other Triwizard champions and the rest of the three schools’ population. It just so happened that Winter and he had a falling out just minutes prior and he had stormed out into the gardens. Being his date-less best mate, I followed him out, sitting on the edge of the fountain next to him.’_

_“Hey.” Leonis said as he sat down next to Arcturus. “Night not going well for you?”_

_Arcturus ran his fingers through his hair and ruffled it, ruining the slick style of his hair. “I just… I don’t understand girls. Why do they have to make things so complicated?”_

_He chuckled, eyeing his best mate’s outfit as he observed the male’s position. “You’re pretty tense right now. Do you want a massage?”_

_Something in his mate’s expression changed, flickering and he straightened, looking Leo right in the eye. “Was that an invitation?”_

_Leo felt his cheeks heat up, unnoticeable in the shadow of the night. “I uh…”_

_Suddenly Arcturus grunted, clawing at his throat, coughing. Thin red streaks of blood ran down his neck and below the line of his shirt._

_“Hey, don’t do that!” Leonis moved his hands to draw Arcturus’s hands from his throat but the moment Leo’s hands touched his, his mate flinched and growled at Leo, staring deeply into his eyes as if he could read Leo’s mind. Leo flinched involuntarily before wrapping his hands tightly around Arcturus’s hands. “What’s wrong?”_

_Arcturus wrestled his hands out of Leo’s grip and he stood up, hands pressing down on Leo’s shoulder and he began to suck at the exposed skin of Leo’s neck. Leo squirmed, fighting the feeling of arousal as his friend licked at the nape of his neck._

_“You smell sweet, Leo. I wonder why…” His face flushed as his best mate sucked harder at Leonis’s throat, the latter groaning._

_Why was he doing this? He had Winter and clearly a dispute wasn’t enough to break their relationship. Even if it was, that wouldn’t explain why he was sucking on Leo’s neck like this._

_He tried to push his best mate off. “W-wait… Stop…”_

_Suddenly, a blinding pain sprouted from his neck and he cried out, a strange sensation following it. Something ran down his front, tickling him and he feebly moved his hand to wipe at it but he only succeeded in pressing the fabric of his shirt closer to his body and smearing it into his shirt. He felt faint, his sight was starting to blur and the suction on his neck only got stronger._

_“Leo? Oh heavens, why did I—Leo? Leo!” He felt hands on his cheeks and he blinked slowly, looking at his best mate’s eyes. They were filled to the brim with tears and he could make out something smeared on his face. He raised his hand to his mate’s face, wiping at the smear._

_“You idiot.” Leonis said, half-joking in the seriousness of the mood. “You should have told me you were a vampire.”_

_His head spun, tilting backwards and he slumped onto the stone of the fountain on his side. “Always knew you were a messy eater.”_

_“Leo? Leo! Don’t you dare die on me!”_

The ghost continued on with his narration. _‘After I became a ghost, which happened as soon as I died in St. Mungo’s when they tried all the bloody replenishing potions they had on me, he came back to me to apologize. The girl that had cursed him was found out and she was sent straight to Azkaban without even a trial. She apparently had a record even before she had started at Hogwarts and her parents weren’t the sanest of all people. That spell, I figured out what she had meant to do. When she cast the spell on him, she had meant for his lover, which she had assumed was Winter, to be the casualty and for her to die at his hands in revenge for rejecting her. However, the definition of “lover” in this case could be implied as “the one who loves” therefore meaning it could be anyone that had simply admired my best mate and they could have died. The “love” part of it didn’t have to be reciprocated. The spell made my blood smell incredibly sweet and rather tasty. How pitiful it was for me, that I wasn’t even able to confess before I died and no one, not a single resident at Hogwarts, had thought that people could actually be_ **gay** _. She planned for him to be condemned to Azkaban and suffer from heartbreak. Well, she sort of got what she wanted in the end. I died instead of Winter and my best mate died shortly after from the side effects of the spell as did the caster. The reason I became a ghost was because the spell had drawn my soul out of my body, preventing my body from being able to function and I died.’_

_‘You could say I was just unfortunate and in the wrong place at the wrong time. Clearly, that incident was traumatizing and the Ministry blamed the Triwizard Tournament for the death of three people in the matter of a few days, one including a promising pupil that could have been a pride of the Ministry. The tradition ended and the tournament never took place again except in the case of your generation.’_

One of the Ravenclaw eighth-years raised her hand slightly. “What was the full name of your best mate? If you don’t mind me asking that is.”

 

Leo looked almost surprised. “I thought you might have assumed when I introduced myself. We were a pair of daring troublemakers we were, Black and Lestrange. If I had lived longer, I might not have been a Lestrange for much longer though I’m sure they’ve banished both of us off the family tree by now. Our families were quite homophobic and the fact that we both died at the same time, one causing the other’s death, that was just a disaster in disguise. If any of you are curious enough, I’m pretty sure you can pull up the family trees of the Sacred Twenty-Eight from the library or on the family tree if you’ve got access to one of the personal ones.”

 

* * *

 

Harry made his way to the drawing room where the family tree of the House of Black spread across the wall. At the very bottom, he could see **_Edward Remus Lupin_** and he noticed Malfoy’s name slightly above it. He wasn’t surprised, Sirius had once mentioned that Bellatrix, Narcissa, and Andromeda were his cousins, making Draco Malfoy related to Sirius.

 

His eyes wandered over Sirius’s name, only his picture blackened from a sloppy work at blasting him off the family tree. He looked to the right where **_Bellatrix Lestrange_** _(née Black)_ met **_Rodolphus Lestrange_**. A whole other family tree sprouted from **_Rodolphus Lestrange_** and at the very top, he spotted Leo’s portrait. Only a think black line had been burned through his portrait, contrasting with his pale skin. His name was still left intact, **_Leonis Serenus Lestrange_** right next to **_Arcturus Hyperion Black_**.

 

Harry stared at the two portraits.

 

In another house, on a similar family tree, Draco was doing the same.

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't feel like researching a ton so if there's some kind of contradiction, I apologize. I do know that Myrtle died after Leo so that wouldn't really explain why you could see the color of his outfit in comparison to Myrtle but then again, just trying to make it work.
> 
> Please give kudos and feel free to comment what you thought.


End file.
